Slashdot Mirror
Experiment Cuts Off Online Junkies from Internet
Ant (an Internet junkie) writes "An article from The Register reports one begins gibbering uncontrollably because he/she can't get a fix without internet access after two weeks. That, at least, is according to an 'Internet Deprivation Study' carried out by Yahoo! and advertising outfit OMD.
Participants in the human experiment were deprived of the web for 14 days, and found themselves quickly succumbing to 'withdrawal and feelings of loss, frustration and disconnectedness.' The reason for the rapid collapse of their universe is - say the researchers - because 'internet users feel confident, secure and empowered.'"
Next we'll see how people who are used to talking and communicating with others in person in every day life react when they are locked in a well lit room for two weeks with no human contact.
I rent an office in OMD. Now the posters on the wall talking about the power of viral marketing are making rather more sense...
It is ratehr when I go hiking in the Swiss Mountains, I suddenly feel empowered...
I guess they should not just disconnect these "users" but rather offer them to practise some intensive sport activities instead.
Hiking in the mountains is a good candidate because it is also rewarding : you get to see some magnificent landscape when you reach the top.
Trolling using another account since 2005.
Honestly, I would give anything to get away from the Internet for two weeks. A disconnection, though probably disorienting for a couple days, would be so pleasant.
Unfortunately, since all my work (read: paychecks) come from the computer, I can't do that.
That sucks.
"All your base are belong to this file I send in order to have your advice."
Can't being on the internet all day/night cause this to happen with your real life? or is that just me....
Like Louis in the second ring world book I take time off the wire for maintnace such as sleep, food and exercise, if for no other reason is that by living longer I may have more time to be online!!
why,yes i was jokeing...
Damn the man!
Access to liberal amounts of interactive and uncensored media should be a modern human right. How else will we have informed citizens, the FREE television and radio signals that are programmed to induce a delusional sense of individual being when in fact you are part of a mass marketed lifestyle based on unsustainable resource depletion?
An Education is the Font of All Liberty
I'm online a good bit of the time...but when I'm away from the Internet for more than a few days, I don't get some strange emotion called "Disconnected". That would imply that I'm away from part of my body or mind.
I do feel a bit annoyed that I can't talk with friends who aren't physically near me (I don't have a cell phone), and it's inconvenient when I want to look something up, but that's about it. I really don't see how someone who mostly just chats when they're online could get "addicted" to the Internet.
"We couldn't plan a weekend getaway," confirmed Kim V, presumably from the house in which she had been imprisoned since the web embargo.
So Kim's parents, nor her grandparents, were ever able to go anywhere for the weekend? How in the hell did we as a species ever get this far, that we can suddenly become a bunch of helpless twits? Christ it's amazing, that in such a short time, humanity has gone so far backwards, head firmly planted in ass, as to be generating shit like this. I do take the article to be something of a joke, I mean it *has* to be.. Fuck, this is crazy, I have to stop drinking while reading this site...
"2 weeks without slashdot?!?! NOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOoooooooooooooo....."
I was about to post how great it'd be to get away from Slashdot for a couple of weeks... then I realized I volunteered to visit.
Crap. It's just like smoking. >:I
"Derp de derp."
If yours were longer than mine then it would be innappropriate to discuss such matters on this forum...
But 14 days without internet can be an interesting experience. Lst year I went on two and a half weeks of vacation to the alps without a computer in sight. I was totally relaxed, actually got some decent sleep (as opposed to my usual semi-neurotic insomnia) and when I returned from vacation I was entirely revitalized, out of touch with my normal "plugged-in" world, but revitalized nonetheless.. Now I am back to semi-neurotic-insomnia.... time to get back out there...
-if at first you don't succeed, stay the heck away from paragliding.
The only thing funnier than a joke is when a geek takes his time to answer all things that was said in jest :-)
This just in. The telephone changed the way we all lived and undeveloped adolescent girls and boys spend inordinant amounts of time talking on it, describing a feeling of disconnect when deprived.
Get a grip. This exact same crap was said a century ago. The past is sooooo golden. That is, until you get there. Then it sucks.
It depends what you do on the net, and if it really makes you happy.
:-)
And it depends what kind of life you have outside the net, and if that world makes you happy.
For example when I join an Art of Living course for a week or two, I come back invigorated and ready to rock the world. I'd just had an extraordinary time without any computers!
Then I sit down in front of a computer, and all that energy is drained into silly bugs, and a dozens things I have to repair and fix in order to remain sane.
I can imagine if I didn't have something really worthwhile outside the net, like Art of Living, I would miss the online world, just because it's an easy way to hide from it. Obnoxious commercials all over the place doesn't help either, but a walk in the forest and mountains works wonders
http://www.debunkingskeptics.com/
I know people who would pull a shotgun to someone's face for even mentioning they should give up access for a week.
Thats not because they're Right Wing, that's because they're unhinged.
If you're on holiday or acation or whatever you want to call it it will be far easier to get by
Living out your normal everyday life without net access though would be exceptionally diffivult for the majority of us
Does the press never get tired of labelling the Internet negatively? It's getting really tedious, IMHO.
I personally think the internet is one of the greatest things that humans have ever invented, as it allows anyone with access to get their hands on an immense amount of information on anything they want, and to contact people who may be just like them - or completely different.
I use the Internet for getting information, being entertained and contacting people - and these are without any real limit, other than what I'm not interested in. It's a vital resource, and it's obviously 'addictive', in the same way that anything that can provide so much can be. Doesn't mean it's going to be a bad thing, even if there's a dark underbelly to it at times. The net's just a reflection of the people who use it, so it's clear that since people aren't all perfect, the content they produce will echo this fact. I'm an evangelist for the Internet, but that's 'cause I think it's f***ing cool.
---
"I did nothing. I did absolutely nothing and it was everything that I thought it could be."
...Internet users feel confident, secure and empowered...
With all that information at your fingertips, the possibility to contact about anybody (that wants to be contacted) this is a small wonder. Internet users ARE confident, secure*1 and empowered.
*1 If you equal the small chance of being run over by a truck at home as secure...
I'm the same way. I find I can leave it all behind once I go camping or what not despite normally spending hours on the 'net at home. But the one thing I find myself doing is wishing I had some sort of text only Google appliance I could fit in my pocket so that I could ask simple questions.
Support the First Amendment. Read at -1
I recently have been on 2 5 day not only inet but power blackouts!
The 1st time was not so bad. I had my Palm fully charged and loaded with good books to read. And that is not unimportant as it seems because it is a back-lit screen so I could read at night without having to resort to a lot of lamps, candles, or flashlights. All but the latter generate heat, bad!, and the flashlights use up batteries quickly enough when there are none in the state!
I can say that I suffered no real ill effects but of course I had plenty of other things to keep me miserable at the same time. The sweltering heat, the fun of cooking without power, cleaning up the mess with chainsaws (Ok that one was kinda fun.), cold showers. But I did miss it.
Now the 2nd time was a little more rough. I lost my DSL as the storm 1st hit but still had dial-up and power. I was hopeful. Well that got dashed pretty quickly as the power soon went out again and into darkness and heat I plunged. I had changed up my backup Palm that I use for writing on the road but had forgotten to install the keyboard driver for it, doh! My main Palm was only 1/2 charged and it died about day 2. Back to reading by candle light!
I guess my example is a bad one because there were so many other variables involved but I can say that as someone who uses the inet probably way too much that I suffered no real ill effects. I used the time to do some writing the old fashioned way with paper and reading a bunch. I also listened to the radio a lot and knowing that everyone down here was pretty much in the same boat helped.
Oh, and btw as Jeanne is likely headed our way right now I have both Palm's charged up and ready to go!
Really, I know what I'm doing...Ohhhh, look at the shiny buttons!
Which makes it a lot different than withdrawal from any kind of substance abuse. If you quit smoking, drinking, smoking crack, whatever, you can't take a vacation and forget about it.
What?
I have been doing a lot of thinking about this recently, and I'm guessing I've probably gone somewhat overboard. I have two computers, a Nextel phone, a Cingular phone, a Sidekick, and a cable modem. Recently, when a friend had to send in her laptop to the bloodsuckers at Best Buy for repair, I decided that it would be no big deal for me to loan her my PowerBook for the three weeks she would be without her computer. Two weeks in and I'm still comfortable with the proposition. Frankly, if my job didn't require a computer, and if it didn't make my life as a computer science student much easier, I think I would just give up on all this.
Presently I'm having a real struggle with being in college (and being so connected) period. I spent the summer working hard with a tree service company. It was a great workout and I expanded my mind in new ways. I have fully learned that simply because something is physically intense does not mean it's for morons. Nevertheless, I am being told I would be "settling for mediocrity" if I dropped out of school and did that sort of work full time. Well the thing is, I did a little math and realized that I don't need to make $100,000 a year to live the way I want to. In fact, the $14/hour tree job seems perfect.
The thing that gets me the most upset about all this is I have recently concluded that I am absolutely surrounded by mediocrity every day at school. I have a professor who is an MIT grad who doesn't even know the difference between ethernet and PS/2 connections. The people I work with on campus spend more time doing CYA work than anything real (that's cover your ass, if you haven't experienced that before). The campus's security policies and practices are half-assed and inconsistent. So are all the construction efforts. Most students are nothing but drunken robots who spend their nights at the same shitty bar(s), and their days doing nothing but mechanically studying and spewing worthless facts. Most professors rely on rote recitation teaching methods. There really is no effort being put forth by so many people here, yet when I clearly demonstrated superior knowledge in an Italian course I received a failing grade due to poor attendance and was not allowed to appeal that decision.
Sound like I'm just ranting about school, specifically my school? I'm not. Many, if not all colleges have many or all of these problems. The fact is that the Internet has turned me into an impatient bastard. Yes, it does make a few things easier, but if school was actually worthwhile I wouldn't mind going down to the surprisingly good library here and doing some old-fashioned research. Right now there is no incentive to do so.
What are the best things that have come out of the Internet anyway? I would probably say that through its increased communication, we have been given the open source movement. While on the surface this is a great idea, it has serious problems also. What about the people whose lives are taken over by their projects simply because they spend "a little time on it after work?" I may be talking out of my ass here, but I am willing to bet that the current open source development model leads to burnout. And so does anything that is based on the Internet and the assumption that it automatically makes things faster, better, smarter, and easier, because it does not. The Internet is a tool, and can be a difficult one to use appropriately. Our overdependence on it is going to continually get worse before a solution is found. But please, go on, continue living a connected life. I probably will. What it really comes down to is I don't have the balls to get out of this shitty lifestyle and move on to something I'd really rather do, and I think this is true of a really large portion of the people who spend a lot of time on the Internet.
I am feeling fat and sassy
Here you go, then..!
Since when did soul=christian? Taken that link from your atheist comment?
Soulless here is more an emotional shallowness where the consumption of goods is the only affirmation of the worth of life.
Yes, christianity *can* be an answer. *Any* religion can be. It doesn't have to be spiritual either, though. There are many more ways of connecting with others than with uniformity of belief.
As an agnostic (there may *be* a god, but I won't change the way I live my life because of it and if the afterlife is an eternity of torment because I didn't beleive, then f*ck him) I find the worst thing about prosetylising (aargh, bad word to spell!) christians is that they want you to read the latest word but will NOT return the favour.
Other religions seem somewhat better, though that may be just because they have to live in a mainly christian society and have to put up with it.
ANY belief system should be through real faith. Real failth *demands* doubt. If you act on your belief and think "what if I'm wrong" and would, if you *knew* it was wrong, do something different then that means your belief needs changing.
I have no issue even with satanists. As long as they only abuse themselves and allow people to join or leave as they wish while describing *why* they are right, I have no hassle with them. You never know, they could be right.
I guess the question is, then, why do we go back? Isn't this essentially like a drug? We know we're better off without it, but it has some actual benefits and it "feels so good." This is a load of bullshit.
You are not better off without it. Remember the days of Encyclopedias, and asking your father about something and being told to go look it up? Without the instant access to knowledge that you have today, cursory reasearch is made a lot harder.
Today I read about 12 new technologies, "talked" with 15 people across the US at no phone cost to me. I sent instant mail to 3 clients and recieved immediate responses. I often research companies online. I figure out who I'm boycotting this week. I discuss politics, religion, and money with a wide variety of people from all over the globe.
There is no way in hell, that I'd go back to 1983. You've got to be kidding me to say we'd be better off not using the net every day.
The reason for the rapid collapse of their universe is - say the researchers - because 'Internet users feel confident, secure and empowered.'
Shenanigans. It's simply because they're disconnected from their friends, information, and entertainment. The same thing would happen if, before the prevalence of the Internet, you told people they couldn't use the phone, watch TV, or read a newspaper for 2 weeks.
I hope they didn't pay these "researchers" any of my money.
YOu broke from your normal routine though. I find I can go long stretches of time without the internet if I am on vacation or something. But for me to be at home, going to work, living my life, etc, I have a very hard time looking over at my computer and NOT touching it. Its part of my daily routinie to be able to read slashdot and other news sites. Being cut off from it probably would drive me crazy.
I find it very odd that most media, even technologically oriented media, is still referring to the internet (I refuse to capitalize it) as a uniform thing. The internet is nothing but a large, scalable network that happens to be the cheapest way of moving data around.
Due to the cost effectiveness of the internet, we are now seeing a rapid deployment of various services on this network. Though some of these services require a WAN type computer network (ie. online message boards), many services now being deployed on the internet existed before the internet.
VOIP is just one of the many examples of a technology that is being deployed on the internet. However, telephone communication has existed for over a century. There are many people that used to waste an inordinate amount of time on the telephone before there was any internet. So now, if these same people used something like Skype to communicate with their friends, would they be addicted to the internet.
The same holds true for any number of other hobbies. I used to spend a lot of time playing games in school. Many people used to engage in multiplayer LAN gaming before the widespread use of the internet. Now they're connecting to each other using the internet. So now, do we have a situation where every hardcore gamer is addicted to the internet.
Anyway, I think that research should stop referring to the internet as some sort of homogenous thing. People have been addicted to their particular hobbies, healthy or unhealthy, for a long time. There have been game addicts, telephone addicts, porn addicts, music addicts, and movie addicts since way before the internet. Its just that all their hobbies have now converged on this thing called the internet.
So basically, I think these kind of studies are useless. Telling me that someone is addicted to the internet means nothing. Are they having problems because they can't get their fill of porn. Or perhaps they are addicted to Slashdot. Even the two demographics converge in this case, they are quite disparate addictions.
So in conclusion, I would say, no fucking shit. Obviously people will miss the internet. Pretty soon all their movies, TV porn, music, voice and video communication, and information will be on the internet.
The way you put it we are clearly better for having the internet. But you assume that all of these things are necessary. I suppose it depends on how you view things, but I am not so sure they are necessary. I still have yet to find a personal philosophy that addresses all these issues, but either way I'm not sure that this is black and white, either the internet sucks or rocks. It's pretty clear that there is more to it than that and simply because there seem to be a lot of benefits doesn't mean it's a good thing.
I am feeling fat and sassy
I remember this same type of study being reported when I was a kid (in the 1960s) only the culprit was Television. No doubt there was one for Radio as well, and possibly Telephones. Yawn. My whole family uses the Internet extensively, and although we go camping almost every summer and to Hawaii about every 2 years for stretches of 3 weeks at a time nobody has ever shown any deprivation symptoms. It all depends on your personality I guess. Or maybe it depends on whether some geeky psychologist is asking you a bunch of questions and making you feel important? Time to pop open an ice-cold can of Heisenberg.
My daily work life is tied to the internet, so are my 1000+ e-mails aday i get at home.
No internet for 2 weeks would be no work..no income ( or vacation, whatever that is ) and a overfull in-box..
While i would freak for not being online, its not due to addiction, its due to reality...
---- Booth was a patriot ----
Take away any major aspect of somebody's day to day activities and they'll suffer discomfort and anxiety. If an every-day commuter has his car taken away for two weeks, he can take the bus and still get where he needs to go, but it takes four times as long and is an utter waste of his time, which is frustrating. It's frustrating to go from being able to instantly satisfy one's curiosities on the internet to being unable to do so. It's frustrating to a runner when he gets into a car accident and is paralyzed from the waist down. It's frustrating to an (both professional and hobby) opera singer to get strep throat and be unable to sing for two weeks.
On the internet, you can find any piece of news or information INSTANTLY, whereas otherwise you have to go to the library, find the book it's in via the card catalog, hope that it isn't checked out, and then look up the information. It's frustrating to be confined to this method of information access, it feels very restrictive.
When it boils down, it's about freedom. Freedom to satisfy our desires and curiosities without inhibition or restriction. The information available on the internet is often unavailable anywhere else, and it is often made available FOR FREE.
- Slashdot covers news that will not end up in my local newspaper. I don't have to spend a dime to get that news either, it's FREE. (admittedly slashdot sells subscriptions, but they aren't required in order to read the news. Ever see a newspaper with no advertisements?)
- When I hit up wikipedia because I want to read about antimatter, it's FREE. (admittedly they do ask for donations, but it isn't required. You are FREE to make donations as you see fit)
- I don't have to concern myself with long distance charges so I can call my aunt and uncle in Pittsburgh (I'm in Seattle), because I can drop them an email with a voice attachment wishing them a happy anniversary, and IT IS FREE!
- Or I can make a VOIP call FOR FREE and talk to friends and family for as long as I want.
- When I want to see how my stocks are doing, I don't have to call my broker, wait on hold for 20 minutes, get told he's out at lunch and do I want to be transferred to his voicemail; all I have to do is go to yahoo's finance pages and enter the ticker symbol, and I will get a significantly greater amount of information than just the high and low of the day as my broker would tell me on the telephone--FOR FREE!
And so forth. It's about freedom, it's about empowerment. If you asked everyone to ditch their cars and go back to horses and carriages they'd laugh you out of the building. The internet brings a better way of life to us just as other improvements in technology have. The difference between the internet and other liberating technologies is that the internet empowers us on many levels instead of just one level; a coffee machine only makes coffee, a car is only useful for transporting yourself and your belongings, but the internet is a communications platform, a meeting place, a network of knowledge, a network of storage, a historical reference, and the list goes on. Taking away the internet today is the rough equivalent of saying the following 50 years ago: You may no longer write letters. You may no longer talk on the telephone. You may no longer ask questions of anybody you cannot meet face to face. You cannot seek knowledge without being instructed by a teacher.
Reinvent the wheel only at either a lower cost, greater effectiveness, or your own personal enrichment and satisfaction.
Well... nothing is "necessary" if you really think about it. By that argument we ought to all go back to hunting/gathering, because really whats "necessary" beyond eating and reproducing?
As for whether or not the internet is a "good thing", I see plenty of concrete, tangible benefits to the internet, as shown by the OP and others. What I don't see is a list of concrete, tangible detriments. Usually the best people can come up with is that it makes people more "disconnected", or destroys the sense of "community", or some other wishy-washy unverifiable thing. Even the case one could make based on this article is pretty weak. I mean, find an activity or consumable that nobody will use to excess. You can't. I'd bet even some of our hunter/gatherer ancestors ate too many berries and suffered the consequences.
I don't know, but I would get a similar feeling anytime I can't do something because of a technical problem. Say if I want to cook something and the stove is not working, or if the telephone is out of order, the car is in the shop, etc. It's not really internet related, but simply the fact that you can't go about your normal routine.